Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Night Carrier Landings in Rough Seas

That commander is a [bleep] stud, to do what you can't in good conscience send someone who's green up to do.

I still think conditions were too extreme to do training exercises though, those planes are too expensive and pilots are worth more than the planes.

But dang that was a great film.

That "Carrier" series is courtesy of Mel Gibson's production company.

It was a damn good series and needs to be seen by every American, especially those who are critical of our active duty Military.

Just a private pilot but, enough to give me a real inkling of the momentary terror and epinephrine rush when "SHTF" moments pop up. There actually is an analogous situation giving anesthesia when in a moment you feel a patient is dying in your hands and you have only moments to do exactly the right thing.

That commander on the bridge was one level-headed fellow. Especially with having to launch tankers to fuel up the ones that kept bolting?

Amazing stuff all the way around.

It is because it contains stuff that is copyrighted by PBS

He is a great guy. How can you beat a callsign of "Sex"!

Because we dind't want to work for a living

Still curious about the tone of the LSO's voice as he is trying to talk Hultgren down. Do you think he knew of her poor skills before talking to her? Listening to him, it just seems from his tone that he is talking to a pilot who he knows to be a problem (apart from that landing) and hence his tone and mode of addressing her. I'd love to hear some of the Naval Aviator's here view the video and opine on this issue.

Yes. The LSO would have been very aware of any issues she had prior and would have closely tracked her progress through Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLPs) where we practice touch and goes ashore with a fresnel lense (the ball) and an outline of the carrier deck . Just like at sea, every pass is graded by an LSO so he can ensure the Aviator is making progress and he can correct any dangerous trends.

This assumes of course that the Aviator can put their ego in check and listen to the LSO and the LSO is not receiving pressure from above to ensure the student gets qualified. But we've been down this road.

Good post. To that I'll add Hultgren's record was well known in Naval Aviation circles, espcially after her real grades were leaked by an FRS LSO after the Navy tried to hide her substandard record. Like I said on my original post, the Navy killed her, then in a fit of "mea culpa" spent millions in fishing her out of the bottom to give her a feted burial at Arlington attended by the CNO and SECNAV. Had that been me or any other male aviator, we'd still be fish food and in my time, I buried a few of them, some with distiguished combat records and not once, did any of those big shots show up to the funerals.

I had a friend at Jax Beach, FL whose daughter was married to a Naval Academy Graduate and was a Naval Aviator. He was also a Squadron Commander. While on an R&R trip to the Philippines during a Veitnam Deployment he took a plane from a rework facility in the Philippenes on a test flight and something went wrong during the flight and it went down. They never did recover enough of him for his wife and kids to have final closure.

Just my worm's eye view.

I remember a buddy that served on a carrier talking about using the fire hose to wash a pilot's body off the side of the hull that had ejected into same after a bad landing.

Hats off to you that have to land them.

You don't have to have military experience to know this. The same thing happens with coed high school PE classes (I can remember segregated classes). Are there PE classes anymore? Anyway, it's millennia of human experience that inculcates an element into the mental environment that The Left, in their foolishness, have thrown out--common sense.

Women are of equal value but different.

Jorge - That footage of the A-6 ejection are pretty spectacular. Amazing, in fact. IIRC, weren't the ejection seats in the Intruder designed to blast right through the canopy, instead of blowing the glass off first?

Jorge,

That one was from a hook point failure, the bolt sheared after they caught the wire and they lost about 30 kts before they went flying again. The LSO's spotted the deceleration and, thank God, immediately called for the ejection. They didn't have flying speed and would have gone straight into the drink if they'd stayed in. The only reason the jet flew away was because of the weight and CG shift, no way it'd have stayed flying with them in it. I remember watching that tape many times during the LSO briefings before going out to the ship.

Yes, in the A-6 and the EA-6B as well as the S-3 we ejected through the glass. There were little bumps on the top of the seat that would break the structural integrity of the canopy but most people ended up with some cuts on their shoulders. On the other hand, you didn't have to wait for the canopy to leave and clear so it was a decent way to do it. The AV-8 and the T-45 have get cord that breaks it.

In addition, in the Prowler the seats leave in sequence. ECMO 3, the left rear instantly, right rear .4 secs later, ECMO 1 the right front, .8 secs and the pilot 1.2 secs. They do diverge slightly in azimuth but they need the time to avoid bumping into each other. Low and slow you can see the affect. It's long wait if you're the pilot. You can see the advantage of the ballistic spreader that blows the parachute open on this. I had complete and utter faith in the Martin Baker seat functioning. When we lost a jet in VAQ-141 the pilot was successful ejection number 6000 using a Martin Baker seat.

Here's what it looks like from a Prowler. It seemed for a while every cold cat shot in the fleet had an EA-6B attached to it. At 56,000 lbs we needed about 155 knots to fly away. Cats fail for various reasons and not often but when they do it's never good.

Great stuff guys. There's another video on U tube of another A6 Off America that was pretty spectacular. Off the CAT, just couldn't get the knots up and first you see him pickle the drops and she just keeps rolling right. Eventually and I think too late for me they jump out. Check it out. jorge

Zero-zero seats are great (You can eject at zero altitude and zero knots speed and still make it, IF you don't have a sink rate.)

The three jets I flew didn't have seats that good. All of them (as best I recall) were rated for 100 feet and 100 knots, no sink rate; that would get you a full canopy and one swing before before you hit. Any tiny bit you could be climbing helped.

The Cessna O-2 required a manual bailout. You had to slide the right seat back, manually jettison the door, then dive down and out. If you didn't clear the wing strut ahead and below it, you'd either get hung up on the strut or hit the rear prop. It was neither quick nor especially plausible, but I know at least two guys who managed to do it and live.

JorgeI, Pugs wasn't it that the back seater was ejected out the underside of the A-6 platform when it first went into the fleet or was it another aircraft I seem to remember something about the weapons or electronics officer was doomed if they ejected at low altitude on either landing or takeoff.

NACES seat is fantastic. It automatically rights the seat with thrust vectoring and fires the parachute up with a small rocket so you don't have to fall to fill the chute.